Machine Learning-Based Plasma Protein Risk Score Improves Atrial Fibrillation Prediction Over Clinical and Genomic...

Clinical factors discriminate incident atrial fibrillation (AF) risk with moderate accuracy, with only modest improvement after incorporation of polygenic risk scores. Whether emerging large-scale proteomic profiling can augment AF risk estimation is unknown.

In the UK Biobank cohort, we derived and validated a machine learning model to predict incident AF risk using serum proteins (Pro-AF). We compared Pro-AF to a validated clinical risk score (Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology-Atrial Fibrillation, CHARGE-AF) and an AF polygenic risk score. Models were evaluated in a multiply resampled test set from nested cross-validation (internal test set), and a sample of UK Biobank participants separate from model development (hold-out test set). Metrics included discrimination of 5-year incident AF using time-dependent area under the receiver operating characteristic curve and net reclassification.

Trained in 32 631 UK Biobank participants, Pro-AF predicts incident AF using 121 protein levels (out of 2911 protein analytes). When assessed in the internal test set comprising 30 632 individuals (mean age 57±8 years, 54% women, 2045 AF events) and hold-out test set comprising 13 998 individuals (mean age 57±8 years, 54% women, 870 AF events), discrimination of 5-year incident AF was highest using Pro-AF (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve internal: 0.761 [95% CI, 0.745-0.780], hold-out: 0.763 [0.734-0.784]), followed by CHARGE-AF (0.719 [0.700-0.737]; 0.702 [0.668-0.730]) and the polygenic risk score (0.686 [0.668-0.702]; 0.682 [0.660-0.710]). AF risk estimates were well-calibrated, and the addition of Pro-AF led to substantial continuous net reclassification improvement over CHARGE-AF (eg, internal test set 0.410 [0.330-0.492]). A simplified Pro-AF including only the 5 most influential proteins (NT-proBNP [N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide], EDA2R [ectodysplasin A2 receptor], NPPB [B-type natriuretic peptide], BCAN [brevican core protein], and GDF15 [growth/differentiation factor 15]), retained favorable discriminative value (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve internal: 0.750 [0.733-0.768]; hold-out: 0.759 [0.732-0.790]).

A machine learning-based protein score discriminates 5-year incident AF risk favorably compared with clinical and genetic risk factors. Large-scale proteomic analysis may assist in the prioritization of individuals at risk for AF for screening and related preventive interventions.